This little girl has an alert dog – and she insisted he feature in her yearbook

A little over four years ago, before Kaleigh Buckminster had her adorable alert dog, Memphis, home-life was very different.

For one, mum and dad Joy and Taylor had to get up every two hours during the night to check their diabetic daughter's blood sugar levels. “There are times that you're so exhausted, you may sleep through one alarm, and all of a sudden, you just have this gut-wrenching feeling that you just fly out of bed,” Taylor, who lives with his family in Oklahoma, has previously explained to News OK. However, when a then eight month old Golden Lab arrived (he's worth €16,500 and the Buckministers had to hold nine fundraising drives in order to buy him) the family's lives drastically changed for the better. Kaleigh, who also has a brother, Kamdyn, was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes when she was a little over a year old - and she has a particularly aggressive strain. “They've told us several times that it's a miracle she's still with us,” Joy has revealed, adding that her daughter has spent time in intensive care. The highly-trained animals are not, of course, replacements for blood sugar measuring devices. But alert dogs play vital roles within a household and save lives. And these days, Memphis goes everywhere with Kaleigh, including to her school. So understandably when it came to taking photos for the yearbook, the now seven-year-old insisted her life-saving dog was included alongside her classmates at Chisholm Elementary School. The resulting side-by-side images of the Buckminster 'children' continues to delight the internet - understandably so too. And so here's to all the wonderful assistant doing wonderful, important jobs.